Body found on Christmas Eve spurs plea for neighborly welfare checks

7:21 PM,
Jan. 19, 2013

Postal mail carrier Jerrod Josephson delivers mail on his route on the near east side of Oshkosh. He called the Oshkosh Police for a welfare check on one of the clients on his route that the mail had been piling up at his house. The man had passed away. Mail carriers get to know the people and houses on their routes and often call in reports of problems.

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Evidence of a tragedy slowly stacked up: No one had shoveled or even stepped in the 10-inches of snow covering the driveway. The mailbox overflowed. The windows stayed dark. The car hadn't moved in days.

Jerrod Josephson took note of these signs each day he delivered mail in the 900 block of Eastman Street in Oshkosh. Then, on Christmas Eve, as he approached the mailbox, he heard a dog barking inside the house. "I thought the worst right there," he said.

Josephson, 44, notified his supervisor, who called police. Inside, they found a 51-year-old man, dead and decaying, unnoticed by neighbors, ...